In Israel, outpouring of grief over death of Elie Wiesel

Wiesel was vice chairman of the council of Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.

Elie Wiesel was memorialized Sunday at a private service in Manhattan, as family and friends gathered and praised the endurance and eloquence of the Nobel Peace Prize victor and mourned him as one of the last firsthand witnesses to the Nazis’ atrocities.

Rabbi Perry Berkowitz called Wiesel’s death a “double tragedy”, since the world lost someone so “rare and unusual” and that Holocaust survivors are dying out.

A hearse was seen outside the Orthodox Jewish synagogue and mourners were arriving around 10 a.m. “Elie was born in 1927 in the town of Sighet, and during the Holocaust, when Elie was faced with certain death in the horrors of the Auschwitz concentration camp, he refused to give up the will to live”. Wiesel was among the first survivors to write about his experiences and he was among the last remaining authors from that time.

Foxman said that in recent months he and Wiesel would reminisce, in Yiddish, and talk philosophy. “His life was dedicated to the fight against all hatred, and for the sake of man as created in the image of God – he was a guide for us all”. Earlier this year, Hungarian survivor and Nobel literature victor Imre Kertesz died. “Well now he’s a little closer”. Like Wiesel, he was 87.